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ftate of depuration; in which cafe it muft be excluded, as a fungus, from the fexual fyftem of plants. Its great efficacy, and the manner in which it acts in the ftopping of hemorrhages, when it can be applied to the blood veffels, is also celebrated. Mem. VIII. Anatomical Effay on the Structure and Use of the Epiploon. By M. CHAUSSIER. Some new and curious ob

fervations are to be found in this memoir.

Mem. IX. On the following Question: Is Gold really diffolved in the nitrous Acid? By M. MORVEAU. This eminent chemist, in opposition to M. Tillet, who held that the gold is attacked, but not diffolved, neither wholly nor in part, in the nitrous acid, affirms that a fmall portion of it is really diffolved.

Mem. X. Analysis of the Water of the Lake of Cherchiaio, near Monte Rotondo in Tufcany. By M. MARET. This water, as appears by the refult of the analyfis, contains acid of borax, fulphur, clay, a large portion of pure air, and a little lime.

Mem. XI. Concerning the Ice that affumes, at the Surface of the Earth, the Form of Needles or perpendicular Filaments. By M. RIThe Academician accounts for this phenomenon by the rarified vapours, or igneous emanations, which carry along with them aqueous vapours, and meet with a fudden cold as they rife out of the ground. They are cryftalized in feparate filaments, because they efcape in filaments through the pores of the earth; and pyramidal needles are obferved, because it is in this form that the congelation of water commences. Accordingly, M. RIBOUD perceived a number of fmall holes in the ground; and each of thefe was the bafe of a needle or filament of ice.

Mem. XII. Concerning the Origin of the Bodies of Ice that are carried down great Rivers in the Times of hard Froft. By M. GODART. We have here various obfervations which feem to prove that in running waters, congelation does not begin at the bottom, but that the ice is precipitated there, either by the motion or by the weight of the fand and pebbles or Aints, that are carried along with the current. Hence M. GODART concludes, that the icy cruft is produced at the furface of a river, but never at its bottom; that it is the element both of the compact and fpungy ice; that it forms the compact ice at the furface, when the waters are in a state of rest, and the fpungy ice at the bottom, in proportion to their weight, and the force of the cur

rents.

Mem. XIII. Obfervations on a Cataract, accompanied with a Diffolution of the vitreous Humour. By M. CHAUSSIER. The intenfe pain fuffered by the patient in this diforder determined the operator to extract the cataract: but after having made an incifion in the cornea, the vitreous humour being as fluid as water, efcaped almoft entirely, fo that the cryftalline funk

into the eye-ball, and was carried behind the iris. Upon this M. CHAUSSIER fufpended his attempt to extract the lens, and only dreffed the wound. The next day he found the eye-ball reftored to its plenitude, and the cryftalline on the borders of the incifion; fo that he extracted it with the greateft facility. This fact has induced the Author to think, that in this operation there may be cafes in which it would be expedient to let fome time intervene between the incifion of the cornea, and the extraction of the cryftalline.

The meteoro-nofological hiftory of the fix laft months of the year 1784 terminates this volume.

ART. V.

Recherches Phyfiologiques et Philofophiques fur la Senfibilité, ou la Vie animale, i. e. Phyfiological and Philofophical Inquiries concerning Senfibility, or animal Life. By M. DE SEZE, M. D. Member of the Academy of Sciences at Bourdeaux. 8vo.

W

Paris.

E have often heard theological doctors (who had corrupted the fimplicity, and clouded the perfpicuity of religious truth, by mixing with its pure and primitive luftre, the fallacious lights of ill-employed erudition and metaphyfical theories) wifely admonished to return to their bibles, and to draw thofe truths that reftore or confirm the health of the foul, from their original and genuine fources. A fimilar admonition, with refpect to the fcience that has for its object the health of the body, is addreffed to his medical brethren by the ingenious Author of thefe Inquiries. When we read the preliminary dif course that is prefixed to this volume, we think we hear him addreffing himself to the faculty in the following manner. "Sons of Hygeia! in what labyrinths have you involved yourfelves by departing from the fimplicity of nature and of truth, feduced by fallacious analogies, ingenious fancies, ill-judged coalitions of fciences that have no real relation to each other, the bewitching charms of novelty, and the towering pride of fyftem? Come back to Hippocrates-come back to the oracle of Cos-who expofed, in their true colours and characters, the difeafes to which humanity is fubject, pointed out the irregular motions they produce, and the more or less happy efforts employed by nature to repel or cure them. Return to Hippocrates, who, in his immortal works, has told us, not what he had fancied, but what he had feen. Woe unto you, who, feduced by the dubious principle of a great modern (that all the sciences are but branches proceeding from one common trunk), have fubjected the animal body to the laws that are followed by inanimate fubftances, and explained its functions by the laws of

* Boerhaave.

mechanics,

mechanics, chemistry, hydraulics, and fo on. Are ye all mad? Do you think that any man but a poet would look upon the human body as a machine, which has its pumps, levers, pullies, fuckers? and are ye fo foolish as to think, before you have better proofs, that life refults from the action of fluids on folids, and the reaction of folids on fluids? How do you prove, my very ingenious but deluded brethren, that the human body is an hydraulic machine? Have you ever perceived, either with your microfcope (which alters the fenfations that fight has given us, and at beft makes us fee objects through a dubious medium), or with your eagle-eyes, fenfation, feeling, or fpontaneous mobility in a mere machine? Are you fure that there is any one fyftem of phyfics whofe laws extend to all natural bodies; and why may not animated bodies be confidered as fubject to the laws of a fyftem peculiar to themfelves? Senfibility, which is their principle of motion, their firft fpring, has no affinity or relation to the moving powers known to us and will you pretend to compare an active machine poffeffed of fenfibility in all its parts, with one that is inactive, infenfible, and inanimate ?"

It is thus that our Author exhorts (what he calls) the mechanical phyficians to return to the fimplicity of the ancients, whofe natural fagacity, together with their acute, patient, and perfevering fpirit of obfervation, was an equivalent for the brilliant difcoveries and inventions that have been the boast of fucceeding ages. The Hippocratic doctrine of a principle of fenfibility, which vivifies all the parts of the human body, is, in his opinion, the great bafis of all medical truths. This doctrine, which was obfcured fomewhat by Galen, fuffocated by the Arabian peripatetics, and Paracelfus, renewed by Van Helmont, and adopted and develloped by Stahl and de Bordeu, our Au thor endeavours to illuftrate, and confirm, by a long feries of propofitions, intimately connected with and founded upon facts, more than upon opinions. The work would fuffer greatly by being abridged. It deferves a perufal, whether the doctrine be true or dubious; for it is compofed with no fmall degree of fa gacity and erudition.

ART. VI.

Mémoire fur l'Origine et la Nature de la Matiere animale, i. e. Concerning the Origin and Nature of animal Matter. By M. BoCHAUTE, Member of the Academy of Bruffels. Paris. 1785.

B

Y animal matter this Author understands a fubftance chemically compofed in the elaboratory of nature, palpably obfervable in animals, of which it conftitutes the main mass, but very obfcurely perceivable in plants, though it seems to be the bafis of their organization. His defign is to prove, that nature compofes this fubitance only in the vegetable king

dom,

dom, from which it paffes (either directly or indirectly), completely formed, into animals for their nutrition. This fubftance, which is diftinguishable by the fingular and fœtid odour it emits in combuftion, is the only natural body that is fufceptible of putrid fermentation. It is, in animals, the principal fubftance of bones, cartilages, nails, ligaments, tendons, fibres, nerves, membranes, of the blood, the lymph, the white of eggs, of pafte, the cheefy part of milk, &c. and, in vegetables, it conftitutes the principal part of the feed, the parenchyma of roots, &c. We cannot follow our Author in his analyfis of this animal matter, nor in his accurate account of the order in which its products are exhibited during the analyfis made with fire. We recommend thefe de ails to the curiofity of the chemical reader, for to us they appear acute, judicious, and inftructive. This animal fubftance was firft difcovered by the famous Beccari, completely formed' in a pafte of wheat-flour, which he had analyfed merely by washing it with water. In this fimple operation he, with the utmoft eafe, feparated the pafte into two fubftances of very different kind: the one was fine flour (amidon), which was precipitated to the bottom of the water, the other a glutinous elaftic fubftance, which, being dried, was half transparent, and not only perfectly refembled horn, but emitted, when burnt, the fame foetid fmell that horn fends forth when in combuftion. Rouelle the younger, as our Author obferves, fought for the animal fubftance in other vegetables befide wheat, and he found it in the green juices that are preffed out of fresh plants, and more efpecially in the green. muddy matter which is feparated from the juices by water, in a moderate degree of ebullition. Our Author purfued the experimental analyfis of Rouelle ftill farther, employed it on a great number of plants, and obtained Beccari's glutinous animal fubftance from them all. Thefe experiments, and their refults, are here exhibited in an ample detail.

ART. VII.

Leçons de l'Hiftoire, ou Lettres d'un Père à fon Fil fur les Faits intereffans de l'Hiftoire Univerfelle, i. e. Letters from a Father to his Son concerning the moft interefting Facts and Events of Univerfal Hiftory. By the Author of the Comte de Valmont. Vols. I. & II. 12mo. Paris. 1786.

HE Abbé GERARD is juftly celebrated for his Comte de Valmont, in which agreeable and inftructive work he dif played the truth, excellence, and importance of religion, in a manner equally proper to inform the understanding and to touch the heart. Thefe hiftorical letters give him a new title to the esteem and gratitude of the Public. They are calculated to render the ftudy of hiftory easy and agreeable, as well as in

ftructive,

ftructive, to a multitude of readers, who are difcouraged and difgufted by voluminous details of uninterefting events and laborious accumulations of arid and heavy erudition. He has felected from the hiftory of the world thofe facts and events that are moft worthy of attention, by their certitude and moment, by the confequences deducible from them, and the ufeful and affecting leffons which they are adapted to teach. Nor has he neglected the particular circumftances and facts that tend to throw light on the hiftory and characters of eminent men; he has even given fummaties of the doctrine and writings of feveral, who have obtained a diftinguifhed rank in the annals of philofophy and ufeful erudition. He has divided his work into epochas. The remarkable events that have happened in all nations, under each epocha, are exhibited together, that the reader, after having perufed the hiftory of one nation, may not be obliged to return to the chronological point whence he fet out, in order to read the hiftory of another. But though the events of all nations. are exhibited in the fame epocha, they are free from confufion; they are placed in fuch a natural order as connects them together, fo that, amid an agreeable diverfity, there is no dif order. The fituation of each people is alfo well afcertained and indicated in maps, in which the Author has been affifted by the learned M. Mentelle, his particular friend, who is one of the most efteemed geographers in France.

The two volumes now before us, of this commendable work, contain fifteen letters and five epochas, which carry the hiftory down to the year 1209 before the birth of Chrift.

Before he arrived at this term, he had many rugged ways to pass, and feveral difficulties to encounter. The ambiguous chronology of remote periods, the boafted origin and antiquity of certain nations, the cofmogony and religious opinions of these nations, and the true state of the arts and fciences in the early ages of cloudy and gigantic renown-all thefe difficulties he has encountered with as much fuccefs as could be expected, and (what we deem particularly meritorious, because it is rare) he has not lavished ample details of useless, and therefore tiresome erudition, on objects which are not fufceptible of illuftration. He has, nevertheless, arranged, with greater art and fimplicity, the hiftorical chaos of antiquity, than most other writers have done; and few, if any, have drawn more inftructive and affecting moral leffons from the manners and characters of the nations whofe hiftory he has written.

ART.

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